Birthday Bash 2022

20th Anniversary!

Prompt 2

Cursed

xxXxx

Haru could feel her stomach twist and turn nervously as she entered the fourth storage room of the museum she was interning at. She looked carefully at her piece of paper before proceeding to the back of the tall shelves. She coughed once from the dust before holding a sleeve up to her mouth.

'I don't think being literally one minute late was worth this kind of punishment,' she thought mutinously as her eyes strained against the poor lighting. 'Everyone else on internships gets to translate hieroglyphs or inspect ancient jewelry, and here I am on cleaning duty.'

Then again, Curator Muska seemed to have it out for her in particular. Haru knows it wasn't anything she actually did since he had given her that weird glare at first sight when she arrived with the new batch of interns. If he couldn't get her for being late, he'd certainly scold her for clocking in a minute early or not using the right cleaning equipment even though it was what she was told to use.

Haru sighed and tried not to worry about it as she wandered deeper into the maze of boxes and shelves. 'I shouldn't complain. Restoring the pieces is part of the job, after all, and at least I'm not mopping floors again.'

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a box with a large paper taped to the top of it that looked like it had writing written in blood. Since it was the first thing to stick out in this place, Haru walked closer to see it was actually red marker that had clearly been written years ago. She wiped away the dust trying to obscure the words.

Warning- The doll in this box has been the common factor in every owner's death since it was stolen from a Jewish toymaker's shop on KristallNacht. It was donated to the museum because the last owner's son didn't want anyone else to fall victim to its curse, but the last person to handle it also suffered a strange death. I couldn't let this doll just sit back here and wait to hurt the next person stupid enough to touch it without saying anything. If you must handle it, at least use gloves and don't linger with it!

There was no signature, but the way the words were formed made it look like whoever was giving the warning had to be quick so they wouldn't be caught.

"Kristallnacht," Haru whispered with a cold chill running up her spine. She shook her head while standing to her full height. "Well, to be fair, anything stolen on that date deserves to be cursed." The brunette glanced again at the paper in her hand to see if she was getting close. She brightened at first that she was at the right spot…

Until she realized that the item number in her hand matched the one on the 'cursed' box.

"Really?" Haru asked flatly, double and triple checking the number to be sure it wasn't her imagination, but no.

Curator Muska apparently hated her so much, he wanted her to work with an artifact that could potentially kill her if one believed the stories.

"I don't get paid enough for this," she grumbled as she carefully picked up the box. "Thank you, my good Samaritan, but I know full well that it won't end well for me whether or not I touch this."

At least she only had a few more days left of being treated like the mat people wiped their dirty shoes on, and then back home. At least Haru was smart enough to document all of the abuse so that when she was questioned about Muska's undoubtedly poor review, she could prove it was an unfair bias.

Haru was still careful about taking the box out of the fourth storage room and heading to her favorite 'cleaning' desk, nice and tucked away from everyone else since the other interns didn't want a turn at being the unfavorite. She closed the door behind her and took the three steps forward to set the box gently on her desk.

She made sure all the tools she would need were out and threw on a smock and latex gloves before sitting down and staring at the box in front of her. "Maybe some tea first," she muttered under her breath, reaching under her desk for the bottle of tea she had smuggled inside her personal bag.

If Muska was going to hold her very existence against her, what was a little tea going to change?

Haru took a long swig before locking the lid back on and sliding it and the bag under the desk again before resting her hands on either side of the box. "Here goes everything," she sighed in resignation as she lifted the lid.

Haru gaped at what she saw. "Wow," she breathed while setting the lid aside so that she could lift the doll carefully out of the specially imprinted foam, which was old and stiff.

It was a cat doll, but not what she normally would think of if someone used the phrase. It might have been her years' worth of anime and manga intake talking, but she couldn't help finding the suited gentleman that happened to be a cat to be breathtaking in every detail.

"You can actually see the folds of the clothing!" Haru exclaimed with delight, gently using her fingers to confirm that the doll was made from a solid piece of wood and not just wearing a cloth suit. "There's even tiny marks in the wood to help give the suggestion of fur; whoever made this is an artist! I mean no disrespect to your history, but I completely understand why people would want to steal you," Haru confided, barely registering that she was now talking to the doll over talking about him.

But why shouldn't she? It was so hard to get her mom or Hiromi for a call when the time zones were so different. She did share her hotel room with another intern, but even she wouldn't talk to Haru when there were people around.

Her heart ached at the thought that it was nearing a week without anyone to say more than pleasantries to. "I bet it's been even harder on you than me," the college student acknowledged sadly. "I know I'd go mad if I was the one locked up in a box and forgotten about." She smiled at the doll and gently set him on his feet, partially to check his balance. "I guess this is a little rude; my name is Haru Yoshioka," she introduced herself while using her arms and torso to echo the motions of a curtsy. "I'll be your cleaner today, though between us, you don't really seem to need my help. That foam did a good job keeping the dust off, and your paint looks like the color is still holding its integrity. Don't mind me daydreaming about what a whole toyshop full of beauties like you might have looked like," she added wistfully. "I bet those were the days, huh?"

It could have been her imagination, but the glass marbles that had been set into his head for eyes seemed to turn just a shade darker green, as if the doll was also lost in thoughts of the past.

"It's just not often you see handwork like you," Haru clarified sadly. "I'd love to report that mankind's improved on how to resolve their differences since Kristallnacht, but my pants would probably catch fire."

It might have been her sadly laughing at the poor joke, but part of her couldn't help feeling like he would agree with her if he only possessed the ability to talk.

Using only her fingers, she slowly rotated him so that she could see every detail, from the gloved hand holding up the cane at his front to the orange tail slightly swishing from the backseat of his grey pants. "It really is a crying shame that you've been wasting away in storage. That toymaker surely didn't pour so much love into making you just to be forgotten about. Maybe that's why the curator wanted me to work on you specifically," Haru realized with delight. "Maybe you're about to be put on display and he no longer cares about the strange coinci-"

The marble eyes suddenly flashed an angry green, making a gurgled gasp come from behind her. Haru turned around and immediately began screaming.

Curator Muska had somehow slipped into her workspace… and had a long wire wrapped between his hands, which were raised a bit over her head. He was already staggering back and tripping over his own feet as he fought to breathe, but Haru couldn't wait.

"Help! He tried to kill me!" Haru screamed, more than a little relieved when she heard more than one set of footsteps come running.

ooOoo

The officer tapped his notes while giving Haru a very strange stare. "And he just collapsed?"

Haru nodded shakily as she held her tea bottle between her hands; no longer caring if someone was going to scold her for this one bit of comfort against almost getting killed.

The officer hummed before looking at the doll, as if he thought that taking pictures of it and the note that had been taped to the top of the box were an unnecessary waste of his time. "I highly doubt that the doll actually did anything, but it's clear that you didn't leave a mark on your boss. Are you sure you two never had a fight?"

"He hated me on sight, and picked fights later," Haru repeated, though she was getting sick and tired of being asked the same questions over and over. "I don't know if the doll had anything to do with the fact that I'm still breathing, but it was awfully convenient for the curator to get a stroke or whatever it was happened right before attacking me. Maybe I reminded him of an old girlfriend?" Haru added with a strained laugh since she needed something to distract her from how close she had come to death. "You can ask anyone; he wasn't subtle about hating me."

He pursed his lips before looking at the doll again. "Just in case it was a curse, why don't you put him back where you found him? And let me have the paper so we can track it down later if we continue the investigation with it." He didn't sound like it was a possibility but was just going through the motions. He'd definitely been interested in her 'harassment log', though.

For some reason, it irked Haru to hear the officer call the doll 'it' instead of 'him'. She knew the doll was inanimate, but he was definitely male! Not that it stopped her from setting her patchwork bag on the desk and setting her tea bottle in it before handing the tracking paper to the officer.

The young woman gave the doll an apologetic look before picking him up and gently setting him into the foam again. "I am sorry about this, but if that was you, thank you for saving my life."

It was probably her wild imagination as well as the scare, but she could have almost seen a spark of panic in his green eyes.

"You talk to dolls?" the officer asked with amusement, making Haru give him a light glare before grabbing the lid.

"I do when they're as realistic as this one. It's such a waste to put him back in storage."

"Jones!" the other cop called out as he entered the workspace again.

Haru held the lid just over the box to pay attention to him.

"The curator had his phone hooked up to his computer and had a program running to make him look like he was hard at work answering emails according to the museum's system. This place needs security cameras in the backrooms as well as in public, because if he hadn't fallen dead before offing our little lady here, there would have been no proof that he ever left his office in the guilty time frame." The new officer turned his head to offer a consoling smile to the intern, who had turned only her head to look at him. "I know you're still shaken, but you must have been born lucky."

"I was born something," Haru agreed while secretly being grateful that she hadn't had time for breakfast that morning. She shook her head and set the box lid gently down on its place over the handsome toy. "If it's all right with you officers; I'm going to take the gentlecat back to where I found him and ask for the rest of the day off. I don't really want to be around anyone right now."

"That's understandable. Heaven knows I never want to finish a shift after someone tries to off me," the first officer admitted while poking around his pockets for a second. "Would you mind taping the box shut with our brand? Just to make sure no one tampers with the doll without making it obvious."

Haru complied, though both of the officers declined the chance to follow her into the fourth storage room. Frankly, since they didn't have a further reason to question her, they left to interrogate other interns and staff to be sure everyone's stories matched up.

Haru looked worriedly at the box in her hands in her careful march, thinking something was… not quite the same as when she was carrying it earlier. She shrugged it off, since she knew for herself that she had placed the doll securely inside the foam before closing and taping the box up.

Which is why she nearly had a stroke herself when she got back to her hotel room and found the doll in her bag with her now drained tea bottle.